Cassidy Yurkovic and Seneca Townsend
Staff Writers
On Nov. 4, 2025, Millersville University’s Department of Art & Design presented Sarah McEneaney as this year’s Conrad Nelson visiting artist. Millersville’s yearly lecture funded by alumni Conrad Nelson and Lucille B. Hagarman showcases the talent of local artists in a free-to-the-public presentation. Titled “Composing a Life,” McEneaney’s lecture provided a look into her everyday life, difficult experiences, and simple pleasures. The artist stated that she aims “to make the personal universal” through her extravagant yet familiar works.
McEneaney is a Philadelphia-based painter, known for her autobiographical work and storytelling throughout and within her pieces. Born in Munich, Germany in 1955, McEneaney graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1979. Having worked and lived in Philadelphia since 1979, McEneaney uses the landscape and experience of the city as the subject in many of her works. Other themes include life stories, home & garden, bathing, sleeping, community, and studio experiences. As she discussed the theme of bathing, she reflected on her drawing lessons of human figures at PAFA.
“I still love the drawing and the painting of people and figures, but I like there to be a context,” said McEneany, applying the techniques she learned in college to her present work.
A unique element of McEneaney’s work is her use of previous works included within her current paintings. She also uses warped and distinct perspective techniques in her work to depict parts of her home or landscape. In her body of works titled “Neighborhood and Community: Urban Landscape,” McEneaney showcases her works of and throughout Philadelphia. Composed of views from her Philadelphia home, her neighborhood, and the beauty of the city, she weaves the story of her 46 years in Philadelphia via her paintings. Throughout her career, she’s painted three murals across the city, one of which depicted her home studio on the building which she calls home. Of those murals, only one of them still exists today, the other two being demolished in 2006 and 2021. McEneaney describes her efforts in artistic connection throughout her home as “thinking locally, acting globally”.
In her section titled “Everyday Life: Mundane to Horrific,” McEneaney takes us through her life, first as an artist fresh out of college in the workforce in the 1980s to her slower, older days as an artist experiencing her life through her work. Beginning as a social worker before becoming a full time artist, she started her painting career using mostly egg tempera paintings, opting for acrylic paint when she began displaying her pieces on larger canvases.
In perhaps her most famous piece, “Son Lover Brother Friend,” McEneaney tells the story of a young man whom she cared for while working in an AIDs hospital and how his death impacted her personally. In another piece in the same compilation, “A,B,C and Me,” McEneaney captures a slow, lazy afternoon, with herself as the subject on a couch surrounded by her pet cats. In the section “Studio is Home, Home is Studio,” McEneaney gives the audience an inside look into her life and process as an artist living and working in her studio. Unlike many of the works of her home garden, this section consists mostly of works displaying the inside of her Philadelphia home. Having lived and worked in this studio for 46 years, McEneaney shows not only the progression of her art through these pieces, but the progression of her home as she experiences it throughout the years.
With works displayed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, the Locks Gallery and more throughout the world, McEneaney provides a familiar, comfortable quality to her impressive line of works. In answering audience questions, McEneaney was asked how she knew a piece of artwork was finished. “The painting tells you when it’s done,” she explained, advising artists to take time with their pieces and step away from their work to view things from a new perspective. Her art connects the everyday, mundane experiences that any viewer can relate to with beautiful, introspective works that give viewers something to reminisce and consider. This fellowship provided an opportunity to showcase McEneaney’s efforts in the visual arts and enabled students, faculty, and community members to come together.
